


Flesh and Bone

by VeteranKlaus



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cyborgs, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Only one not plural, Pre-Canon, kind of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:21:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25059190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: As a kid, Five was sick often. As he aged he supposed that a human wasn’t supposed to defy the laws of physics and reality and manipulate space, and until he truly understood his powers he only did himself harm. Thankfully, Reginald had treatments to help him, whatever they may be.Five is fourteen years old in the apocalypse when he realises what those treatments truly were.
Comments: 22
Kudos: 163





	Flesh and Bone

When Five was young, he was sick often. He remembers being hurt a lot, as a kid, too. He suffered horrible migraines, was nauseas enough that he couldn’t keep food down for days; his body ached in constant pain. As he aged, as he progressed in his powers, it only ever got worse no matter what he did, and nor did he truly understand why this was happening to him. His body was weak, he caught illnesses at any slight exposure to them, he broke his hand catching himself from a small fall; many ailments plagued him, none with seemingly much of a correlation, either. 

In hindsight he could realise that it was his powers; that tearing apart space, tearing apart himself and putting it back together elsewhere, was the main factor in this. A human body was simply not built to withstand what his powers put it through, especially when he was young and had little grasp on what he was actually doing to himself and space. His body was failing him, and it was really only a matter of time until it gave out completely. 

Thankfully, that time never came. Until he managed to get a better understand of and a better grasp on his powers, Reginald gave him treatment. Every so often Five would retire to the infirmary, hooked up to a few things – nothing scary, just things to record his vitals, mainly. He would fall asleep to Grace stroking his hair to distract him from the agony his body was in, and then he would wake up feeling better than ever. 

He never knew what Reginald did to him, but he knew that it worked. He would give him his treatment whenever it was required; whenever his body began to get weak again, whenever it began to fail him, whenever he was in too much pain. He would fuss often if Five got injured, always quick to get Five medical assistance within a few minutes, and Five suspected part of his urgency was because there might be a chance his body might not bounce back so easily, or at all, if too badly injured, and it was simply a chance they couldn’t risk taking.

Five never gave much thought to it. Plus, the older he got, the less he needed it until it was extremely rare for him to receive it again. Reginald still kept tabs on him, but actually receiving his treatment became much less frequent.

The apocalypse, however, brought these thoughts back to the front of his mind.

He worried that it would happen again and that without his treatment his body might truly just fail; he would either be stuck forever in a weak, uncooperative, pain-laden body, struggling through an apocalypse, or he would simply be too weak to go on and he would die because his body could not support itself.

This, however, did not happen.

What did happen was an incident seven months into the apocalypse.

He had set up a base for himself since his arrival, occupying the ruins of the Academy not far from where he had buried the corpses of his siblings – the ones he could find – and he had gathered all the supplies from that area. He was anxious to have to head further into the city or even out of it, but he knew eventually that time would come. It became harder and harder to find supplies because he had simply taken them all from his nearest surroundings; drained the surroundings dry of good clothes, of food, of drink. 

He ventures out further than usual that day. Takes what supplies he does have with him, some food and water to last a couple of days just in case, and decides to trek out in the area he’s explored the least in the hopes of finding some more supplies. He has a bag and his trailer with him, ready to fill both up with these supplies, and he has Delores accompanying him as well, of course. She goes almost everywhere with him these days.

He raids new buildings he comes across, being careful to do so because he has narrowly avoided so far seriously injuring himself in any building collapsing on him and he would prefer to keep it that way. 

Five has never been superstitious – that is more Klaus’ area of expertise – but he might dare to say he jinxed himself.

It is the last house he is checking. He has found a few supplies, but not a lot, and it will get dark soon. He decides that after this house he will begin the trek back to base, because he fears if he keeps going further out he is going to run out of his supplies and not make it back. He’s already gone further out than he first intended due to the foolish desperation that spurred him on to check for more, because surely this can’t be all that’s left, there has to be more food hidden around here, there has to be, there just – there has to be, because Five needs it. He can’t be running this low.

It was a moment of panic that spurred him on. He knows that there will be more food, knows he will always find more, and if he can’t find it then he’ll catch it – even if it is insubstantial but just enough to keep him going. Cockroaches aren’t that bad now that he’s gotten used to them.

So, this is the last house. A normal house, with another one attached to it. He hopes to find some supplies surviving in some of the rooms. He finds a few cans of stuff, too; even finds a new coat upstairs. He returns downstairs, does one more sweep of the place, and he comes across a staircase leading down; a basement.

Curiosity gets the better of him. 

In hindsight he could list all the ways he should have known going into the basement was a stupid idea. It was dark, he couldn’t see the state of it, but he could see the state of the rest of the house and, just like every other building, it was being held together by pure will alone. 

If Klaus were here, he would add how everyone in horror movies die when they go into the basement.

But Klaus is not here, because Klaus is dead, and Five needs to save them and to save them he needs to keep himself alive and to do so he needs to find more supplies, and the basement might have some. So he goes down.

The staircase crumbles beneath his feet.

He falls in the new pile of rubble and has approximately two seconds to listen to the whole building groan, disrupted by the fall, and then follow suit and all collapse.

On top of him.

He wakes up in completely darkness. His left ankle is caught beneath rubble, his body burns in agony, and he can’t move his right arm without seeing stars. 

Five is fucked.

When he gathers himself enough to think clearly, which might have even taken him hours, he realises that he is fucked. There is a whole house on top of him and he is lucky, so lucky that it fell in such a way that it didn’t completely crush him. He is so lucky, but it was his own stupidity that got him in this situation.

He can’t even jump away, because he can’t move. He can’t tear space apart and jump through it because he can’t even move to propel himself through space. He can’t move. He can’t-

He needs to stay calm, and all of a sudden he is. The realisation that Five is going to be trapped here for hours, or days, until he dies does not scare him. He just accepts it. 

Maybe the lack of oxygen will get to him first. If not, then it will be the thirst, which will take days. Maybe his injuries? He can’t tell how injured he is, though, because he can’t see, nor can he move. He can breathe, not perfectly, but well enough. His ribs might be broken, but his lungs aren’t punctured. He can move his right leg and left arm. The fingers on his left hand, at least a couple of them, are broken.

If he were Luther he would be able to push himself out of this; would have withstood some of the fall, too. But he isn’t Luther, and he can’t get out of this. All he can do is resign himself to a slow and painful death. Not that he doesn’t try to get out, but it doesn’t do anything; he just hurts himself even more and hears groaning of rubble above him and although he is going to die anyway, he doesn’t want to be crushed to death, so he stops.

Soon enough the burning, tingling sensation in his left food gives way to numbness, and his right arm is quick to follow it.

Thirst makes him dizzy and desperate and he swears he can hear Delores calling his name; swears he can almost see her, sometimes, but he reaches out and his body is painpainpain and he is back under the rubble. 

Just when he is certain that he’ll be completely incoherent and dead within a few more hours does something happen.

His vision flickers, surely another hallucination, but – 

In the top left corner of his sight, he sees writing.

_> > ACTIVATING EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: SURVIVAL MODE…_

_…_

_> > EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: SURVIVAL MODE: ACTIVATED._

>> SHUTTING DOWN NON-ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS; REVERTING ENERGY TO CORE FUNCTIONS.

_> > ENERGY LEVEL: 63%._

_> > OXYGEN LEVEL: 82%._

_> > ACTION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY._

The words just keep filling his sight, remaining there for what must be several moments before disappearing, except for that last message. Five frowns, shakes his head side to side, but this hallucination follows him everywhere and doesn’t go away and it just flashes every so often, grabbing his attention.

_> > ENERGY LEVEL: 62%._

_> > OXYGEN LEVEL: 81%._

_> > ACTION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY._

Well, he knows he needs to do something to help himself, but his mind trying to tell him this through a coding hallucination is absurd. Only, Five begins to doubt it is simply a hallucination; something in his gut tells him this. But Five is delirious and hallucinating with pain, dropping oxygen levels and he is severely dehydrated. Of course he would think this.

_> > ENERGY LEVEL: 61%._

_> > OXYGEN LEVEL: 80%._

_> > ACTION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY._

And so time goes. He watches his life countdown in front of his eyes in some odd hallucination, watches the numbers tick lower and lower every. He can’t not watch them; they’re there when he closes his eyes and when he opens them, although with the darkness that isn’t so clear.

_> > ENERGY LEVEL: 26%._

_> > OXYGEN LEVEL: 58%._

_> > ACTION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY._

He has thought about ghosts before, of course. Thought about Klaus and his ghosts, and whether or not his siblings might be with him like this. He supposes he will find out soon enough. 

_> > ENERGY LEVEL: 25%._

_> > OXYGEN LEVEL: 56%._

_> > ACTION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY._

_…_

_> > INITIATING: HARGREEVES SURVIVAL OVERRIDE._

That’s new. Five blinks – the message remains – with morbid curiosity. He inhales, and – 

_> > HARGREEVES SURVIVAL OVERRIDE: INITIATED._

_> > ASSESSING SENSORY INPUT…_

_> > ACTIVATING: NIGHT VISION._

_> > EMERGENCY RESOURCES: 1HR 58MIN AVAILABLE._

_> > ENERGY LEVEL: 19%._

_> > OXYGEN LEVEL: 54%._

_> > ACTION REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY._

Five stops reading the messages, because suddenly that is not the only thing he can see. 

He can see – everything. He can see the rubble above him, around him, below him. He can see the dust on his clothes; he can see his ankle trapped under a slab of rubble; he can see his twisted fingers; blood that had trickled from his nose and from a wound on the back of his head, and probably elsewhere too. 

He can feel his left foot again, and the pain of everything is suddenly – muted. Still there, but as if it has been shoved aside and numbed slightly for now, not dissimilar to a rush of adrenaline muting everything.

It feels as if he has been jump started. The sluggishness and confusion plaguing his mind is suddenly gone; he can think with much more clarity than before. 

Nonetheless, he is still confused when he ponders, with rising horror, that those messages were not a hallucination.

His newly focused mind, however, grasps onto the immediate situation.

Five needs to get out. He can deal with whatever the hell is happening to him once he ensures he doesn’t die in this grave he’s thrown himself into.

So, Five moves.

He has to work carefully and slowly, listening to the rubble groaning over his head, fearing it will all come crashing down on this tiny, tiny space he is stuck in. He works to free his foot first, and then he begins, ever so slowly and carefully, to work his way out.

The pain, if nothing else, remains muted; even when his fingers and hands begin to scrape and bleed, even when he forces himself to take advantage of the numbness to force his broken fingers back into position and forces them to move as well; even when rubble slides and traps his leg and he has to free it again.

Five claws himself out of his own would-be grave until he breaches the surface and he can haul himself out onto a large pile of rubble. The sun is blinding at first before his sight adjusts, but it is the most beautiful thing Five thinks he has ever seen.

_> > ENERGY LEVEL: 8%._

_> > OXYGEN LEVEL: 50%._

_> > NIGHT VISION: DEACTIVATED._

_> > EMERGENCY RESOURCES: 47MIN AVAILABLE._

_> > CARE REQUIRED IMMEDIATELY._

He should be moving to get water and food immediately, he knows this. It’s probably the most urgent thing. He won’t last much longer without it.

Nonetheless, he can’t help but simply sit on the rubble, breathing fresh air, feeling a breeze on his skin, staring at the world. His body trembles with a violent onslaught of emotions.

He takes a minute to stare at himself. Unsurprisingly, his clothes are torn to shreds; hang off him loosely, completely ruined. They show all the bruises and scrapes on his skin. 

They show his exposed wounds. On his left leg, they show skin that has been scraped off, and in its place he sees metal plating; scratched. The metal of his ankle is dented and broken; hanging on.

He reaches out a hand with metal plating on the back off it and pulls back the metal on his ankle. There is not flesh and bone and blood, but there is metal, and wires. 

He supposes he always did wonder what Reginald did to help him when his body was falling apart; how he managed to keep it together. 

He did such a great job with Grace, this must have been a walk in the park for him.

In a numb state, Five forces himself to his supplies and Delores waiting for him on the street, in the same place he left them before venturing into that house. He downs a bottle of water and a can of out-of-date spaghetti hoops.

It helps, according to the messages. The remainder of his emergency services turn off, no longer needed them for the boost to get him out of that grave, and he can now take care of himself. A filtering system turns on instead. He supposes he did inhale a lot dust, down there. He used to have asthma when he was young, he remembers, until it got so bad he needed oxygen, and then he got treatment and his lungs were fine.

Sitting down, letting his body slowly begin to rest and recuperate, another message pops up. As he holds down the metal plate over his sparking ankle, he reads;

_> > PLAYING: EMERGENCY MESSAGE TO _NUMBER FIVE_ FROM _REGINALD HARGREEVES_._

**Author's Note:**

> The lovely @MildeAmasoj gave me,,, plenty of android/cyborg tua ideas, and I gave in. Of course.  
> So here we have: cyborg Five.  
> Five's body not handling breaking the laws of physics and reality? Just fix him up with robotics! Reginald Hargreeves approved!
> 
> Anywho, I loved writing this so I'd love to hear what you guys thought about it!! <3


End file.
